By Nash’at Abul-Kheir —
On 13 January 2025, the Court of Cassation, Egypt’s highest judiciary authority, approved
the death sentence delivered by the Alexandria Criminal Court to Nehru Abdel-Moniem, 63, in June 2022 for murdering the Coptic priest Fr Arsanius Wadid. Lawyer Sameh Zaghloul who represents the Church and the priest’s family hailed the death sentence approval as a tribute to justice.
The death sentence is now final.
Fr Arsanius Wadid, a Coptic priest who was born in 1966 and ordained a priest in 1995, lost his life on the evening of 7 April 2022 when he was dealt a deadly stab in the neck by a bearded man on the street in Alexandria. The stabbing occurred on Alexandria’s main thoroughfare, the beachfront Corniche, in the east Alexandria district of Sidi Bishr. The attacker was then 60-year-old Nehru Abdel-Moneim Tawfiq, commonly referred to as Nehru.
Fr Arsanius had been accompanying a group of some 35 young men and women from his church, the church of the Holy Virgin and Mar-Boulos (St Paul) in Karmouz, for a day of leisure and spiritual activity at the beach. As the day drew to a close, the group gathered to board microbuses and head back to their church at around 8pm, a bearded man attacked the priest and stabbed him. Fr Arsanius was directly moved to hospital where he breathed his last. The stabber, who was initially described by a number of eyewitnesses as uttering loud incoherent phrases and making strange gestures, was caught by the passers by and handed to the police who quickly arrived at the scene.
The murderer was charged with premeditated murder of the Coptic priest Fr Arsanius Wadid and, on 11 June 2022, Alexandria Criminal Court, handed him a death sentence.
